Brussels, 17/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament has decided to postpone its vote on the European arrest warrant until the beginning of next year. Once Italy rallied to the view of the other fourteen Member States on the planned European arrest warrant, the Council transmitted the dossier to the European Parliament so that it could take urgent action to ensure the text could be formally adopted as soon as possible. The MEPs therefore decided to consider the text on Monday, despite opposition from various deputies who wanted to have more time to discuss the text. Meanwhile, thirty MEPs sent the President of the European Parliament prior notice of their request for the vote to be postponed. Opening the plenary session on Monday, Nicole Fontaine therefore proposed to the MEPs to send the text to the relevant committee for a report to be prepared and they agreed. If the vote had taken place on Monday it would have been a vote without a report. The European Parliament is only consulted about the European arrest warrant, which will be adopted under the third pillar of the Treaty, which means that the EP's opinion is not binding.
The dossier will now be handed over to the Public Liberties Committee (chaired by the British Liberal Democrat Graham Watson) which is very likely to nominate its chair as the rapporteur on Tuesday. The report will cover both terrorism and the European arrest warrant and will be adopted by the Liberties Committee at its 21/22 January meeting and be voted on in second reading during the EP's first or second February session.
Most of the 34 MEPs who signed the "protest" against the emergency procedure are Greens - Cohn-Bendit, Frassoni, Flautre, Hautala, Grafe zu Baringdorf, to name a few - but also Flemming, Helmer, Nicholson and Hannan from the EPP-ED group, Sylla and Seppänen from the United Left/Nordic Green Left, Sandbaek and Krarup from the Europe of Democracies and Diversities and the Liberals Vander Bos and Maaten.